Outside the lines

“MacFayden’s paintings are all about gestures, paint texture and explosions of colour. Some have a post-impressionist landscape feel, while others are full-on abstract expressionist in style. She talks about her work ‘going where the colours take (her),’ a sentiment that perfectly describes the freshness of the paintings as well as their boundless and infectious energy.”

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Artist Statement

I’m a painter and award-winning writer who’s endlessly fascinated with wordplay and the visual arts. Largely self-taught, I painted in watercolours, oils and acrylics in high school, but set the palette aside for two decades while pursuing a career in print journalism. In the mid-1990s I rediscovered my passion for throwing paint around.

For me, art-making is not merely a process of visual expression but a merging with the divine spark/vibrational energy that is, to me, the creative process. The resulting work is hard to categorize: I paint serene, post-impressionist landscapes and I paint boisterous, abstract-expressionist colour bombs. I paint electric skies and lively, dancing gardens. My urban and inner landscapes are more visceral; I apply paint with a vengeance, using brushes, knives, electric toothbrush, rolling pin … dabbling, flinging, dripping.

Growing up in southern Ontario, I was keenly influenced by nature hikes through the woodlands and marshes of Simcoe County with my father Clifford, a painter and avid birdwatcher. Works by Emily Carr, A.Y. Jackson, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Joan Miro and Mark Rothko make me feel great and small at the same time.

I work mostly in acrylics, and I’ve been told there’s a joyous, unfettered quality to my art that borders on reckless abandon; it pleases me to hear that because I never was very good at staying inside the lines.

Exhibition highlights

Real Straight Talk About Souls(for life is holy and every moment is precious)July-October, 2017
Woodcroft Library, Edmonton